KOLKATA: Container Corporation of India Ltd (CONCOR), a Navratna PSU under the Railway ministry, is awaiting green signal from Bangladesh to launch a container train service between the two countries, according to CONCOR chairman, V Kalyana Rama.

Once the container protocol is established, container movement from India to Bangladesh will start happening, Mr Rama said at the 10th Logistics Colloquium organised by industry body, CII in the city on Thursday. “We are waiting for a response from Bangladesh,” he added.

CONCOR had signed an MoU with Container Company of Bangladesh Ltd (CCBL) in April this year during Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to New Delhi.

According to the CONCOR official direct movement of containerised cargo by train will slash trade costs and also make the entire transportation exercise more organized.

Mr Rama also said that CONCOR is in the process of developing logistics centres in public-private partnership (PPP) mode across the country. These logistic centres will have infrastructure for both industrial and agri goods and will add 15 million square feet of warehousing and space.

According to him, warehousing remains a major bottleneck in India. While the US, where the population is one fourth of India’s, has created warehousing 4.4 billion square feet, India has managed to set up only a fourth of that.

Mr Rama also said that the sector which is the worst sufferer of inefficient logistics is agriculture. A huge amount of farm products go waste as a result, he observed. Capacity building in logistics infrastructure is a must for the country’s economic growth, he said. “Use of hardware and software sector is also important for increasing customers’ satisfaction. At CONCOR, we are looking at customer value creation,” Mr Rama said, adding that there is need for a multi-modal logistics infrastructure.